The kitchen was abuzz with activity. I looked on with amazement at the number of things ma was making for me. The puran polis were all done and packed into resealable bags. The cook was frying the chaklis while the maid was rolling the laddoos, even as ma fired instructions to both of them.


Papa kept coming into the kitchen every now and then, sometimes tasting the laddoos or nibbling on the chaklis. “Don’t we have any fruits? Where are the grapes?” he enquired. “Can’t you see the apples and bananas on the table? Look in the fridge, you’ll find some grapes, strawberries and oranges” ma replied sounding very irritated. “Take what you want and sit outside for some time; don’t keep coming in and out of the kitchen so often, it disturbs me no end.”


They seem to be arguing all the time, I thought to myself sadly. They used to be such a gentle couple, quite unlike the cantankerous pair I had seen over the last fortnight. I was really worried for them.


“Your papa,” ma whispered to me, “is losing it. Always interfering….just doesn’t what to do with himself. I just don’t know how to cope with him anymore!”


My heart went out to Papa. Recently retired, he wasn’t used to having time on his hands. He didn’t like watching T.V. and was never into reading. He tried his hand at gardening, but there wasn’t much he could do in the tiny one bedroom apartment with an almost non-existent balcony. So he would just potter around the house to while away the hours.



Ma turned her attention to the grains she planned to roast for making the thalipeeth bhajani. The sheer volume of bhajani that she was planning to pack horrified me. “Are you kidding ma? That bhajani will take up my entire baggage allowance! And can you just stop all this cooking? I don’t want you to tire yourself out.”



“Haven’t I told you so often, let me make all these things while I am physically able to. You have come home after 3 years, god knows when you will come again. Let me pamper you,” she smiled lovingly.
“Listen ma…..” but she cut off my protests with a curt “stop nagging me, go join your father outside.”


So I went and sat with papa who was solving a crossword puzzle, even as he was nibbling on some grapes. “Come beti, sit. Want a fruit? An orange? I’ll peel it for you.” He hadn’t forgotten that I hated peeling oranges.


“No, I’ll peel them myself,” I smiled. He went back to his crossword and as I watched him in amazement as he went from one clue to the next. He looked much healthier and more relaxed since his retirement but in the corners of his eyes, I could detect that vacant look of complete boredom and it troubled me a lot. Poor papa, he really needed to find himself something that would make him happy. I wished there was something I could do for him, but was at a complete loss of ideas.


“ ‘memories preserved, not pickled in jars but frozen forever’, now what kind of a clue is that?” he wondered aloud.


“Ummm..How about ‘photograph’?” I suggested


“8 letters….snapshot.”


“Hey papa, where are the albums? I want to see the old pictures.” But I knew where they would be, they had always been in the shelf in the showcase and I shot out of my chair and grabbed a few.



The albums were neatly labeled according to month, year and occasion – their marriage, their honeymoon, some vacations they had taken, my birth and so forth. Papa was a consummate photographer and for the first time, I realized how good he was. I never seemed to stand still in any pictures, but ma must have loved being his subject. The last of the albums had mostly blurry pictures – no, not taken by him but by a 14 year old me. But after my 15th year, there were no more pictures. I had taken the camera for a school picnic and dropped it, damaging it completely. The lie was easier, so I came back home and claimed that the camera was misplaced, possibly stolen by someone. Papa never replaced that camera, I had been too guilty to ask him to and that was the end of his hobby.



Feeling completely suffocated by the weight of my lie, I decided to step out for a bit. I must have gone out for a couple of hours and when I came back, ma was still in the kitchen, transferring some pickles into smaller bottles and papa was now attacking a Sudoku puzzle.


“Papa…for you,” I said, giving him the DSLR that I had purchased when I went out. “And maybe it is time for me to confess that your old camera wasn’t stolen. I….uh….I dropped it and it….it….broke.”


He nodded. “I’ve always suspected it. That is why this camera now, huh?” he said with a twinkle in his eyes.


In no time, he had figured the camera out and was clicking away endlessly. Pictures of me, our apartment, his plants, of the streets that ran around our apartment, of the skyline…


“Click ma’s pictures,” I said.


“You crazy? She’ll bite my head off if I go in there to take pictures,” he laughed. “This fruit bowl here will make for a better subject!”


Ma, in the meantime, had finished her marathon cooking session and walked out at exactly the moment that papa clicked the strawberries.


“Look at him, taking pictures of everything in this house except mine.”


He winked at me and turned to pacify ma by taking her pictures. He said something, she laughed and after a long time, they looked like the couple they used to be.

It didn’t matter that I didn’t have the camera in my hand to capture that moment - I knew it was an image that would live forever in my heart.



So this is my (as always?) late entry to our food fiction event, Of Chalks and Chopsticks that Sra revived last month. This time, there was a cue - in the form of a photo - of a man taking a picture of a bowl of strawberries.


Bongmom is hosting Of Chalks and Chopsticks for July. Head on over to her blog to know more.